Whenever I see a company refer to their own Inc, it bugs me terribly. It's really bad for marketing for two reasons.

-People who know what Inc really means are going to assume that you do not-People who do not know what Inc means are going to find your company to be a bit uptight.

That summarizes it nicely. You're projecting an image that is either uptight and pretentious, or ignorant.

However, given what you've said, I don't think that the person in charge is going to change her mind. In her mind, full name including Inc = professional and everyone else (including NASA, the Marines, and the New York Times) is unprofessional.

So you've got two main choices - ignore it as not worth the fuss, or plan to stage a coup and use the majority to override her, if possible.

What is funny is that if you have a long, awkward name and dicate that it not be shortened, people are going to shorten it anyway. It is better that you control what it is shortened to so it is reasonable and consistent.

For example, our product used to have a short name, like netProduct*. But it didn't really indicate what it did, so the PTB decided all our product names should indicate what they did and do what they say. Sounds reasonable...new customers could get an idea what it was faster. So it was changed to Network Processing Provisioning Manager. We were told NOT to abbreviate/acronymize it. Never. But nobody is going to say that every time! Too long, too awkward. They did persist in the no abbreviations for a while, but then reasonableness took over and we would start with Network Processing Provisioning Manager in a document/presentation and then after that refer to it as NPPM.

*names changed to protect innocent software

And since at first we didn't have a standard abbreviation, one of our clients started calling us C-NPPM (C being the first letter of the name of the company, as we would start a document with CompanyTM Network Processing Provisioning Manager. But company B just bought us so will they stay with C-NPPM or switch to B-NPPM or just NPPM?

OP - so what happened at the meeting? I'm fascinated by the president's attitude towards this and her absolute refusal to consider all the evidence you brought forward and I'm terribly curious to hear what happened!

OP here. Sorry for the delay. And for the length of this. I tried to pare it down.

We had the meeting and it wasn’t the President that was the problem, but a real Steamroller of a Director.

Steamroller kept saying we had to “get the proposal done” and that we didn’t have time to talk about the name. The President got angry (unusual for her), insisting that since people had demanded by email to talk about the name at the meeting, we were going to talk.about.the.name.

Steamroller then said that “we agreed (via email before) that we would use our 1st 3 initials (ALS) as an abbreviation.” Everyone, including the President nodded. Steamroller then added “and everyone knows that the full legal name with the Inc is only for the legal contracts and we are only using it on the title page of the proposal, right?” Everyone but the President nodded. Steamroller declared the name topic over.

Knowing that the President's style is to just not to discuss what she doesn't agree with, then to do what she wants, I pushed back saying “so we don’t use the full legal name in the chapter titles? Or in the narrative?”. Steamroller, rather condescendingly, said that was correct and that was how it already was in proposal. I pulled out a hard copy of the prior emails and of the proposal. There was an email that said “Antique Linen Society of the Northeastern Mountain, Inc” was to be in a couple chapter titles. Then I pointed out that it was also used throughout the proposal.

Everyone was “That’s not right! That’s not professional!”. The President was quiet and downcast.

So we reached a consensus that “Antique Linen Society of the Northeastern Mountain, Inc” is for legal contracts and the title page. We will use “Antique Linen Society of the Northeastern Mountain (hereafter known as ALS)” at the start of the Introduction then use “ALS” after that. Our “nickname” is the “Antique Linen Society”.

Our meetings are very confusing. Added to that, the minutes are not very good records of what was discussed and agreed on. I wish I had remembered to call for a vote to be sure this was nailed down, but a clear thought process is not possible when trying to deal with Steamroller.

I'm bummed that I didn’t get to use the great – and funny – names and comments here!!

"... projecting an image that is either uptight and pretentious, or ignorant." sums up exactly my feelings on the misuse and overuse of Inc.

** ALS.. is not our real name or initials. I did check on our name and initials and we’re not in conflict with any well-known usage of the initials. Thanks for the heads up on that.